Real Fugitives Might Not Be So Lucky

On his way to execution, he miraculously escapes, thanks to a train wreck, and with federal officers hot on his trail, sets out to find the real killer, a one-armed man.

Sound familiar? Yes, you guessed it. That's the plot for "The Fugitive," the wildly popular movie starring Harrison Ford as the Chicago-based doctor, Richard Kimble.

Based on a popular 1960s television show, it was the summer's biggest hit movie that didn't have any dinosaurs in it.

But here's the twist in our imagined movie plot: After Dr. Kimble finds the real killer, what if he can't get a new trial?

What if the original judge and the appeals courts all the way up to the Supreme Court refuse to hear it? What if in the end, our hero, Richard Kimble, is executed for a crime he didn't commit? Zap!

What? An unhappy ending? No way! Hollywood would never buy it.

Ah, but guess what, "Fugitive" fans? It is probably just what would happen if "The Fugitive" occurred in real life, legal experts say.

Raising that unhappy possibility in the Sept. 13 National Law Journal, Denver lawyer Phillip Figa points out that, in real life, Kimble's case would lack critical criteria necessary for an appeal or a new trial.

For one thing, there was no procedural error in his original trial. The jury had enough evidence to convict Kimble beyond a reasonable doubt. He was found disheveled at the crime scene, his wife called out his name in her incoherent 911 emergency call, she had traces of her husband's skin under her fingernails (resulting from a struggle with him and her killer before she died) and there was no evidence of forced entry by an intruder.

For another thing, Kimble received a fair trial. Considering the evidence, none of which supported Kimble's alibi, the jury could hardly come to any other conclusion.

Third, Kimble had no violation of his constitutional rights to claim. There was no improperly obtained confession or inadmissible evidence. The investigative techniques used were lawful. The defense attorney was not incompetent nor was the prosecutor's conduct unfair or unethical.

What about the one-armed man? Without a confession, his simple alibi, already judged credible during the initial investigation, holds up better than the truth, which turns out to be so convoluted I was still trying to sort it out as I left the theater.

Even a doctor as handsome as Harrison Ford would have a hard time convicting skeptical judges, prosecutors and public that he wasn't just trying a cheap ploy to escape the noose.

Bye, bye, Dr. Kimble.

Could it happen? Since the movie version of "The Fugitive" mostly takes place in Chicago, I asked a seasoned local expert: retired Criminal Court Judge Louis B. Garippo, who convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy, among other current residents of Illinois prisons.

Garippo saw the movie and enjoyed it, he said, but confessed he had not even considered its real-life plausibility until I raised the question. "I was too caught up in the chase and that terrific train wreck scene," he said.

Weren't we all? But the more he thought about it, the more he agreed that Kimble's goose probably would be roasted in real life.

"On a post-conviction in Illinois, you'd have to limit your appeal to specific constitutional violations," he said. "(Kimble's) only apparent recourse would be executive clemency (from the state's governor.)"

Maybe. But that's a pretty thin reed.

How about federal relief? Not from the Reagan-Bush Supreme Court. The scope of federal review, already limited to constitutional errors occurring in the state system, has been further limited, thanks to Chief Justice William Rehnquist's war against what he calls frivolous appeals. The result has greatly speeded up the execution process. A few mistakes? That's tough.

We don't want to think about that or much else in real-life while watching a good movie like "The Fugitive" because we want to believe in happy endings. We want to believe bad guys get punished for their crimes, that good guys win in the end and that the judicial system doesn't make mistakes that won't be corrected before the end of the movie.

Unfortunately, that's a Hollywood fantasy.

Real life is more complicated than that. As much as hard-liners may complain about technicalities that let bad guys delay justice or get off scot-free, technicalities also can prevent good guys from getting off at all.

These days the technicalities keep getting tighter. If real-life cases don't cause you to view that with alarm, maybe the case of Hollywood's Dr. Kimble will.